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With President Trump's tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, and other countries now in full swing, what consequences from an economic standpoint could the U.S. be facing? And what was the path that led us here? Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen put the tariffs question to economist and author Dani Rodrik. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the author of the book Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy. Beginning with the historical context and purpose of tariffs, the conversation covers how the political and social dissatisfaction with hyperglobalization opened the door for these extreme tariffs, whether or not they're an effective tool in modern trade policy, and what alternative strategies exist to rebuild America's middle class. Find All Else Equal on the web: https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/allelse/All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM.
Much like national economies, countries that economically interact with each other need rules to help ensure markets work well, and that economic outcomes accord with some understanding of fairness and equity. While such rules can constrain what a country does, for much of the post-war era, nations have recognized the benefits of international cooperation and the importance of a stable set of rules. Yet, as populism and disdain towards globalization grows, global governance will likely retreat in scope. Could a more circumscribed understanding of global governance help domestic economies do better than if they faced no constraints from global governance rules? Dani Rodrik joins EconoFact Chats to discuss. Dani is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Dani Rodrik (Harvard Kennedy School Economics Professor) joins the podcast to discuss his career, the best case for industrial policy, the labor market effects of globalization, and his vision of an ideal economic policy paradigm. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. He was President of the International Economic Association during 2021-23 and helped found the IEA's Women in Leadership in Economics (IEA-WE) initiative. His most recent books are Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role (2021, edited with Olivier Blanchard) and Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Dani Rodrik (Harvard Kennedy School Economics Professor) joins the podcast to discuss his career, the best case for industrial policy, the labor market effects of globalization, and his vision of an ideal economic policy paradigm. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. He was President of the International Economic Association during 2021-23 and helped found the IEA's Women in Leadership in Economics (IEA-WE) initiative. His most recent books are Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role (2021, edited with Olivier Blanchard) and Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dani Rodrik (Harvard Kennedy School Economics Professor) joins the podcast to discuss his career, the best case for industrial policy, the labor market effects of globalization, and his vision of an ideal economic policy paradigm. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. He was President of the International Economic Association during 2021-23 and helped found the IEA's Women in Leadership in Economics (IEA-WE) initiative. His most recent books are Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role (2021, edited with Olivier Blanchard) and Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
Dani Rodrik (Harvard Kennedy School Economics Professor) joins the podcast to discuss his career, the best case for industrial policy, the labor market effects of globalization, and his vision of an ideal economic policy paradigm. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. He was President of the International Economic Association during 2021-23 and helped found the IEA's Women in Leadership in Economics (IEA-WE) initiative. His most recent books are Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role (2021, edited with Olivier Blanchard) and Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics
Dani Rodrik (Harvard Kennedy School Economics Professor) joins the podcast to discuss his career, the best case for industrial policy, the labor market effects of globalization, and his vision of an ideal economic policy paradigm. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. He was President of the International Economic Association during 2021-23 and helped found the IEA's Women in Leadership in Economics (IEA-WE) initiative. His most recent books are Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role (2021, edited with Olivier Blanchard) and Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance
Harvard Kennedy School Professor Joseph Kalt and Megan Minoka Hill say the evidence is in: When Native nations make their own decisions about what development approaches to take, studies show they consistently out-perform external decision makers like the U.S. Department of Indian Affairs. Kalt and Hill say that's why Harvard is going all in, recently changing the name of the Project on American Indian Economic Development to the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development—pushing the issue of governance to the forefront—and announcing an infusion of millions in funding. When the project launched in the mid-1980s, the popular perception of life in America's indigenous nations—based at least partly in reality—was one of poverty and dysfunction. But it was also a time when tribes were being granted increased autonomy from the federal government and starting to govern themselves. Researchers noticed that unexpected tribal economic success stories were starting to crop up, and they set about trying to determine those successes were a result of causation or coincidence. Over the decades, Kalt and Hill say the research has shown that empowered tribal nations not only succeed themselves, they also become economic engines for the regions that surround them. The recent announcement of $15 million in new support for the program, including an endowed professorship, will help make supporting tribal self-government a permanent part of the Kennedy School's mission. Joseph P. Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development, formerly the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. He is the author of numerous studies on economic development and nation building in Indian Country and a principal author of the Harvard Project's The State of the Native Nations. Together with the University of Arizona's Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, the Project has formed The Partnership for Native Nation Building. Since 2005, Kalt has been a visiting professor at The University of Arizona's Eller College of Management and is also faculty chair for nation building programs at the Native Nations Institute. Kalt has served as advisor to Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a commissioner on the President's Commission on Aviation Safety, and on the Steering Committee of the National Park Service's National Parks for the 21st Century. A native of Tucson, Arizona, he earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.Megan Minoka Hill is senior director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development and director of the Honoring Nations program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Honoring Nations is a national awards program that identifies, celebrates, and shares outstanding examples of tribal governance. Founded in 1998, the awards program spotlights tribal government programs and initiatives that are especially effective in addressing critical concerns and challenges facing the more than 570 Indian nations and their citizens. Hill serves on the board of the Native Governance Center, is a member of the NAGPRA Advisory Committee for the Peabody Museum, and is a member of the Reimagining our Economy Commission at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Hill graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master of Arts Degree in the Social Sciences and earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs and Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows, and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.
The history of American democracy has always been fraught when it comes to race. Yet no matter how elusive it may be, Harvard Kennedy School professors Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Archon Fung say true multiracial democracy not only remains a worthy goal, but achieving it is critically important to our collective future. From the earliest, formative days of the American political experiment, the creation of laws and political structures was often less about achieving some Platonic ideal of the perfect democratic system than it was about finding tenuous compromises between people and groups who had very different beliefs and agendas when it came to the status of people of other races. Those tensions have been baked into our system ever since, and the history of the movement toward a true multi-racial democracy in the United States has been marked with conflict, progress, reaction, and regression—from the 3/5's Compromise to the Civil War to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement and on up to threats to democracy in our present day. Fung is a leading scholar of citizenship and self-governance and the faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Muhammad is a professor of history, race, and public policy and director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. He is also the former director of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the world's leading library and archive of global black history. They say that in our increasingly diverse and interconnected country and world, the question isn't whether or not to strive for a multiracial democracy, but, if you don't fully reckon with how race has shaped our system of governance, can you really have democracy at all?Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two SBs — in philosophy and physics — and his PhD in political science from MIT.Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project and is the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library and the world's leading library and archive of global black history. Before leading the Schomburg Center, he was an associate professor at Indiana University. His scholarship examines the broad intersections of racism, economic inequality, criminal justice and democracy in U.S. history. He is co-editor of “Constructing the Carceral State,” a special issue of the Journal of American History, and the award-winning author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. He is currently co-directing a National Academy of Sciences study on reducing racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. A native of Chicago's South Side, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Economics in 1993, and earned his PhD in U.S. History from Rutgers University.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.
The United States continues to grapple with creating an accurate, national picture of racial inequality in crime and justice. Criminal justice reform requires policies that interrogate and solve for the historical legacy of racial exclusion and structural inequalities.On Tuesday, February 28, the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project (IARA) at the Ash Center hosted a discussion with Bruce Western, Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice and Director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University; and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project; co-chairs of the recent National Academies of Science publication on “Reducing Racial Inequity in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy.” Sandra Susan Smith, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice and Faculty Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, provided an introduction.Read the report: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26705/reducing-racial-inequality-in-crime-and-justice-science-practice-and About the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project IARA's research portfolio focuses on sector-specific interests and critical evaluation of antiracist structures and policies within private, nonprofit, public/government, and academic institutions. By documenting and understanding the field of “diversity” and antiracist training groups, as well as organizations that have sought to engage in antiracist change and the standards by which they have been held accountable, IARA seeks to develop critical measures for establishing antiracist institutional accountability.To learn more about the IARA Project, visit IARA.hks.harvard.edu.Curious how people and organizations are untying knots of systemic oppression and working towards a more equitable future? Tune into the IARA podcast, Untying Knots hosted by Erica Licht and Nikhil Raghuveera: https://iara.hks.harvard.edu/work/untying-knots/ About the Ash Center The Roy and Lila Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation advances excellence and innovation in governance and public policy through research, education, and public discussion. By training the very best leaders, developing powerful new ideas, and disseminating innovative solutions and institutional reforms, the Center's goal is to meet the profound challenges facing the world's citizens.Visit the Ash Center online, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. For updates on the latest research, events, and activities, please signup for our newsletter.Music is Wholesome by Kevin McLeod.
The relationship between race and crime is a central part of the American story. In this week's episode, Josh and Henry talk with Khalil Muhammad, the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. They discuss the contemporary uses of history in public discourse, his award-winning book, “The Condemnation of Blackness,” the uses and misuses of crime statistics, and the need for prosocial interventions to combat community harms.
To be convicted of a crime, a person must be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”Indeed, “reasonable doubt” is one of the hallmarks of our modern criminal justice system. It's typically understood as a legal rule intended to help determine the facts of a specific case and protect the accused.But what if everything we think we know about “reasonable doubt” is wrong? What if its original purpose was actually to shield the souls of judges and juries from eternal damnation? What if it was conceived, not as a tool of the secular law, but as a moral concept steeped in a distinct theological tradition of the Middle Ages and Christendom? A tradition that was preoccupied not with facts, but with the spilling of blood?Our guest for this episode makes this exact argument. Dr. James Whitman has taught at Yale Law School since 1994 and currently serves as the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including his award-winning work honoured by the American Bar Association, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial.00:00 - Introduction03:45 - Defining reasonable doubt (or not)07:50 - The theology of blood12:00 - What an "ordeal"!17:30 - Fourth Lateran Council bans blood-shedding by priests21:30 - Emergence of trial by jury23:20 - Got doubt? Better not act27:50 - Court testimony: the Middle Ages' risky business35:00 - "It is the law that condemns and not I"36:40 - Reasonable doubt: fact finding or moral comfort formula?40:00 - John Adams echoes Pope Innocent III42:30 - Things get fuzzy as public morality fades 46:20 - Presumption of innocence vs. presumption of mercy49:35 - ConclusionIf you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting Crown and Crozier with a tax-deductible donation here: DONATE Documents/Websites referenced Dr. James Whitman (biography)Dr. James Whitman, “The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial” (2008)Catholic Encyclopedia, “Fourth Lateran Council”History.com, “Why John Adams Defended British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials”Magna Carta (English translation)Please note that this podcast has been edited for length and clarity.Support the show (http://missionoftheredeemer.com/crownandcrozier/)
Ben Austen is a journalist and the author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Together they host the podcast Some of My Best Friends Are. ”We're not pretending to have all the answers, but we are attempting to say, ‘this is a real issue and it can't be covered up by simply ignoring it.' And if you can see it for what it is and all of its full dimensions, you have a better shot at bringing people along to get the work done to fix it.” Show notes: @ben_austen @KhalilGMuhammad Austen on Longform Muhammad on Longform 01:00 High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing (Ben Austen • HarperCollins • 2019) 01:00 The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Khalil Gibran Muhammad • Harvard University Press • 2019) 01:00 "The Barbaric History of Sugar in America" (Khalil Gibran Muhammad • New York Times Magazine • Aug 2019) 29:00 Some of My Friends Are, "Critical Race Theory in the Classroom" (Pushkin Industries • Sep 2021) 36:00 "And So Jedidiah Brown Gave All of Himself to the City He Loved" (Ben Austen • Huffington Post • Sep 2017) 43:00 Some of My Friends Are, "European Prisons vs. American Prisons" (Pushkin Industries • Sep 2021) 43:00 "Race and Racism Through the Lens of an Interracial Friendship" (The Brian Lehrer Show • Sep 2021) 54:00 Some of My Friends Are, "Fighting Inequities Through Art" (Pushkin Industries • Nov 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Are Millennials Afraid of Gen Z in the Workplace? There are at least four generations now in the workplace: Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z. Last week in one of The Takeaways editorial meetings, a producer brought up a recent New York Times Article by Emma Goldberg titled “The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them.” And it got our team talking about generational differences in the workplace. We asked our listeners if they felt a generational divide in their workplaces and then we interrogated the idea of generations and whether they're really affecting workplace dynamics with Lindsey Pollak, a career and workplace expert, author of the book “The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace,” and a proud gen-Xer. International Travel To US Open Again Amid A Wave of Flight Cancellations After 20 months of an international travel ban because of the pandemic, the Biden administration is opening up travel into the U.S. for tourists from more than 30 countries. That includes visitors coming from South Africa, Brazil, China, the United Kingdom and more. Here to discuss mass cancellations and what to expect during holiday travel is CNBC airlines reporter Leslie Josephs. Behind the Fight to Reinstate Parole in Illinois Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and journalist Ben Austen co-host the podcast “Some of My Best Friends Are.” They joined The Takeaway to discuss a recent episode of their show examining systems of parole in and outside the United States. For transcripts, see individual segment pages.
Are Millennials Afraid of Gen Z in the Workplace? There are at least four generations now in the workplace: Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z. Last week in one of The Takeaways editorial meetings, a producer brought up a recent New York Times Article by Emma Goldberg titled “The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them.” And it got our team talking about generational differences in the workplace. We asked our listeners if they felt a generational divide in their workplaces and then we interrogated the idea of generations and whether they're really affecting workplace dynamics with Lindsey Pollak, a career and workplace expert, author of the book “The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace,” and a proud gen-Xer. International Travel To US Open Again Amid A Wave of Flight Cancellations After 20 months of an international travel ban because of the pandemic, the Biden administration is opening up travel into the U.S. for tourists from more than 30 countries. That includes visitors coming from South Africa, Brazil, China, the United Kingdom and more. Here to discuss mass cancellations and what to expect during holiday travel is CNBC airlines reporter Leslie Josephs. Behind the Fight to Reinstate Parole in Illinois Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and journalist Ben Austen co-host the podcast “Some of My Best Friends Are.” They joined The Takeaway to discuss a recent episode of their show examining systems of parole in and outside the United States. For transcripts, see individual segment pages.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Ben Austen host the incredible Pushkin podcast, "Some of My Best Friends Are ..." The duo grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, and their show features the kind of frank, honest, thoughtful conversations about race, friendship, and social issues, that only two best friends can have. Today, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, who is black, is a noted academic and scholar who currently serves as the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and directs the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project and is the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Ben Austen, who is white, is an accomplished journalist and the author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. He is a former editor of Harper's Magazine, and his writing has appeared in publications including New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, The Best American Travel Writing, and others. Today on List It, Ben and Khalil break down of their favorite interracial pop culture duos, and explain what they can teach us about race in America.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the key role of the state amidst managing public health and economic disaster. However, if the role of state is growing, is it actually a good thing? These are just a few of the questions discussed in this special live launch of 2020-21 Transition Report: The State Strike Back. EBRD's Anthony Williams was join by a great line up of guests: Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) where she is Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). Dani Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. A special video message from Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, University Professor at Columbia University. EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik and the new EBRD president Odile Renaud-Basso. Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks
COVID-19 has shut down traditional education programs throughout South Asia, from primary education to higher education. This podcast delves into the unique challenges that the region is facing in the education sector, such as access to technology and the potential long-term effects of distance learning. Discussants: - Zainab Qureshi, LEAPS Director, Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD), Harvard Kennedy School - Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Director, Center for International Development; Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School - Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of Practice in International Education; Faculty Director, International Education Policy
Proving Einstein Right on Amazon Jim Gates is the Ford Foundation Professor of Physics, and the Director of The Brown University Theoretical Physics Center. He is a 2013 recipient of the National Medal of Science He was a Distinguished University Professor, University System of Maryland Regents Professor, John S. Toll Professor of Physics, and Director of the Center for String and Particle Theory. Gates is well known for his pioneering work in supersymmetry and supergravity, and his 1977 doctoral dissertation on supersymmetry earned him a prominent place in the early development of the field, as did the 1984 book he co-authored, Superspace, or One thousand and one lessons in supersymmetry, which is widely considered the first comprehensive book on the subject. His study of string theory and supersymmetry has recently led Gates to develop an interest in what are called adinkras. Adinkra symbols are graphical representations of supersymmetric algebras named after symbols created by the Asante people. Adinkras may help us understand the structure of the universe, although Gates cautions, “most of the time when we make up ideas, they’re wrong. However, when we get it right, it’s amazing.” Gates is also a pioneer in another respect, having been the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university. He comes to Brown with a mission to increase the participation of historically underrepresented groups in the sciences. Gates is a former scientific advisor to President Barack Obama, Gates is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the board of trustees of Society for Science & the Public, and one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival’s “Nifty Fifty.” More information on Professor Jim Gates https://sites.brown.edu/sjgates/ Other books by Cathy Pelletier @Dr_JimGates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jim Gates is the Ford Foundation Professor of Physics, and the Director of The Brown University Theoretical Physics Center. He is a 2013 recipient of the National Medal of Science He was a Distinguished University Professor, University System of Maryland Regents Professor, John S. Toll Professor of Physics, and Director of the Center for String and Particle Theory. Gates is well known for his pioneering work in supersymmetry and supergravity, and his 1977 doctoral dissertation on supersymmetry earned him a prominent place in the early development of the field, as did the 1984 book he co-authored, Superspace, or One thousand and one lessons in supersymmetry, which is widely considered the first comprehensive book on the subject. His study of string theory and supersymmetry has recently led Gates to develop an interest in what are called adinkras. Adinkra symbols are graphical representations of supersymmetric algebras named after symbols created by the Asante people. Adinkras may help us understand the structure of the universe, although Gates cautions, “most of the time when we make up ideas, they’re wrong. However, when we get it right, it’s amazing.” Gates is also a pioneer in another respect, having been the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university. He comes to Brown with a mission to increase the participation of historically underrepresented groups in the sciences. Gates is a former scientific advisor to President Barack Obama, Gates is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the board of trustees of Society for Science & the Public, and one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's “Nifty Fifty.”
Dr. Jim Gates is a theoretical physicist and currently the Brown Theoretical Physics Center Director, Ford Foundation Professor of Physics, Affiliate Mathematics Professor, and a Watson Institute for International Studies & Public Affairs Faculty Fellow at Brown University. He is known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. We opened the show with a discussion of Jim’s early career, a B.S. with a dual major in mathematics and physics at MIT and, later, his Ph.D. in physics, also from MIT. In the heart of the podcast, Jim explained Superstring theory—its successes, failures and issues with dark energy. He also explained supersymmetry and supergravity for us. We finished with what’s considered the hottest topic in theoretical astrophysics. Jim is an extraordinary teacher and science communicator, so tune in and get your science hat on!
“Where does the backlash against globalization come from? Where is it headed? And what would a better globalization look like?” Dani Rodrik [https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu] is an economist whose research covers globalization, economic growth and development, and political economy. He is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was previously the Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2013-2015). Professor Rodrik is currently President-Elect of the International Economic Association [http://www.iea-world.org]. His newest book is Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017)[https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/straight-talk-trade]. Watch Watson Institute talk with Dani Rodrik, Mark Blyth, and Brendan Greeley: [https://youtu.be/bsy349k3zds] You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fVi-zfLv-zns_kfj1HOU8e9OnqsTYvhJ/view?usp=sharing]
In episode #32 Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, talks to Social Europe Editor-in-Chief Henning Meyer about the crisis of globalisation and some new policy ideas to address it. This episode is part of the project "The Crisis of Globalisation" that Social Europe runs in cooperation with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Hans Böckler Stiftung.
James Q. Whitman is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and author of the new book Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Whitman and Chauncey discuss the connections between American "race scientists" and their peers in Germany, what the Nazis and Adolf Hitler learned from America's racial order, as well as how American anti-miscegenation laws and Jim and Jane Crow were admired by the Nazis. Professor Whitman also shares his thoughts on the troubling parallels between Donald Trump's rise to power, the recent events in Charlottesville, and Hitler's genocidal authoritarian regime. On this week's show, Chauncey DeVega reflects on Hurricane Harvey and what its devastating aftermath reveals about the color line, income inequality, and disaster capitalism. Chauncey also ponders the morality of trying to profit from the inevitable rebuilding efforts. At the end of the this week's podcast Chauncey also "connects the dots" between the high level of support for Donald Trump among America's police, disinformation about the Black Lives Matter movement, and how the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies have now labeled anti-fascists as "terrorists".
Welcome to episode 16 in Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. In this episode, I talk to a few of my previous guests about the relationship between representative democracy and capitalism. Some common themes emerge, specifically around the power of capital challenging the power of democratically elected governments and the problem of growing inequality and the erosion of the welfare state and social democracy. My first guest is Professor Wolfgang Merkel who spoke about his paper Is Capitalism compatible with Democracy? Professor Merkel is the Director of the Research Unit: Democracy and Democratization at the WZB Social Science Research Centre Berlin, as well as heading up the Centre for Global Constitutionalism and a number of other projects. He has written widely on democracy, democratisation, social democracy and democracy & capitalism to name but a few in academic and non-academic publications. Professor Merkel is a co-project leader of the Democracy Barometer. Next, I spoke with Professor Leonardo Morlino who suggests that whilst we can legitimately talk about alternate systems to democracy asking about alternatives to capitalism is a rhetorical question. Professor Morlino is a professor of political science and director of the Research Center on Democracies and Democratizations at LUISS, Rome. Prof. Morlino is a leading specialist in comparative politics with expertise on Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and the phenomenon of democratization. My third guest is Associate Professor Sofia Näsström who spoke about a paper she wrote with Sara Kalm from Lund University, titled A democratic critique of precarity in which they identify precarity as 'which you identify as the material and psychological vulnerability resulting from neo-liberal economic reforms.' Associate Professor Näsström is from the Department of Government, Uppsala University in Sweden. She works in the field of political theory, with a particular focus on issues related to democracy, constituent power, the people, the right to have rights, representation, freedom and precarity. And finally, I spoke with Professor Archon Fung about the relationship between representative democracy and free-market capitalism, and also about his work around workplace democracy. I hope to look at workplace democracy in more detail in a later season of the podcast. Professor Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. In the next episode of Real Democracy Now! a podcast I’ll be talking with Dr Simon Longstaff the Executive Director of the Ethics Centre here in Australia about ethics and democracy. He touches on democracy and capitalism too. I hope you’ll join me then.
Presentation by Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University at the IFPRI Book Launch, " Structural Change, Fundamentals, and Growth: A Framework and Case Studies", held May 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. About the book: https://www.ifpri.org/publication/structural-change-fundamentals-and-growth-framework-and-case-studies
Today I'm speaking with Professor Archon Fung. Professor Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. I talk to Professor Fung about the concept of ‘pragmatic democracy’ which he describes as being focused on outcomes and then looking at different approaches to democracy to determine which ones will get us closer to those outcomes. In some ways, this approach is similar to the problem-based approach described by Professor Warren in the last episode. He also expands on his article Our desperate need to save US democracy from ourselves from December 2016. We’ll be hearing from Professor Fung later in this season when I pull together different perspectives on democracy and capitalism, as well as in Season 4 Between Election Democracy where his work on empowered participation is particularly relevant. In next week’s episode, I speak with Associate Professor Sofia Nasstrom about her theoretical work developing the concept of ‘the spirit of democracy’. I hope you’ll join me then.
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact on the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Some scholars have denied any influence. Professor Whitman came to a very different conclusion, and what he learned deserves to be much more widely appreciated than it is. For the United States was the global pioneer of explicitly racist law–and not just, by any means, in the Jim Crow South. Strikingly, American law was most helpful to the most radical Nazi jurists. In the early years of the Third Reich, 1933 to 1936, conservative nationalist lawyers in Germany debated with Nazi radicals about how to create a body of anti-Semitic law, but one consonant with German legal traditions, which emphasized strict adherence to carefully-articulated concepts. The radicals found their model in U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation law, and in a legal culture that, from their point of view, was refreshingly open to innovation. Yet even the most radical Nazi jurists found the notorious one-drop rule, and the extreme punishments some U.S. states meted out for entering into racially-mixed marriages, too harsh and inhumane. Professor Whitman’s unsettling, learned, and deeply-engaging book deserves a large audience. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches courses in modern European and German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact on the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Some scholars have denied any influence. Professor Whitman came to a very different conclusion, and what he learned deserves to be much more widely appreciated than it is. For the United States was the global pioneer of explicitly racist law–and not just, by any means, in the Jim Crow South. Strikingly, American law was most helpful to the most radical Nazi jurists. In the early years of the Third Reich, 1933 to 1936, conservative nationalist lawyers in Germany debated with Nazi radicals about how to create a body of anti-Semitic law, but one consonant with German legal traditions, which emphasized strict adherence to carefully-articulated concepts. The radicals found their model in U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation law, and in a legal culture that, from their point of view, was refreshingly open to innovation. Yet even the most radical Nazi jurists found the notorious one-drop rule, and the extreme punishments some U.S. states meted out for entering into racially-mixed marriages, too harsh and inhumane. Professor Whitman’s unsettling, learned, and deeply-engaging book deserves a large audience. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches courses in modern European and German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact on the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Some scholars have denied any influence. Professor Whitman came to a very different conclusion, and what he learned deserves to be much more widely appreciated than it is. For the United States was the global pioneer of explicitly racist law–and not just, by any means, in the Jim Crow South. Strikingly, American law was most helpful to the most radical Nazi jurists. In the early years of the Third Reich, 1933 to 1936, conservative nationalist lawyers in Germany debated with Nazi radicals about how to create a body of anti-Semitic law, but one consonant with German legal traditions, which emphasized strict adherence to carefully-articulated concepts. The radicals found their model in U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation law, and in a legal culture that, from their point of view, was refreshingly open to innovation. Yet even the most radical Nazi jurists found the notorious one-drop rule, and the extreme punishments some U.S. states meted out for entering into racially-mixed marriages, too harsh and inhumane. Professor Whitman’s unsettling, learned, and deeply-engaging book deserves a large audience. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches courses in modern European and German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact on the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Some scholars have denied any influence. Professor Whitman came to a very different conclusion, and what he learned deserves to be much more widely appreciated than it is. For the United States was the global pioneer of explicitly racist law–and not just, by any means, in the Jim Crow South. Strikingly, American law was most helpful to the most radical Nazi jurists. In the early years of the Third Reich, 1933 to 1936, conservative nationalist lawyers in Germany debated with Nazi radicals about how to create a body of anti-Semitic law, but one consonant with German legal traditions, which emphasized strict adherence to carefully-articulated concepts. The radicals found their model in U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation law, and in a legal culture that, from their point of view, was refreshingly open to innovation. Yet even the most radical Nazi jurists found the notorious one-drop rule, and the extreme punishments some U.S. states meted out for entering into racially-mixed marriages, too harsh and inhumane. Professor Whitman’s unsettling, learned, and deeply-engaging book deserves a large audience. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches courses in modern European and German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact on the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Some scholars have denied any influence. Professor Whitman came to a very different conclusion, and what he learned deserves to be much more widely appreciated than it is. For the United States was the global pioneer of explicitly racist law–and not just, by any means, in the Jim Crow South. Strikingly, American law was most helpful to the most radical Nazi jurists. In the early years of the Third Reich, 1933 to 1936, conservative nationalist lawyers in Germany debated with Nazi radicals about how to create a body of anti-Semitic law, but one consonant with German legal traditions, which emphasized strict adherence to carefully-articulated concepts. The radicals found their model in U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation law, and in a legal culture that, from their point of view, was refreshingly open to innovation. Yet even the most radical Nazi jurists found the notorious one-drop rule, and the extreme punishments some U.S. states meted out for entering into racially-mixed marriages, too harsh and inhumane. Professor Whitman’s unsettling, learned, and deeply-engaging book deserves a large audience. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches courses in modern European and German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact on the development of the Nuremberg Laws. Some scholars have denied any influence. Professor Whitman came to a very different conclusion, and what he learned deserves to be much more widely appreciated than it is. For the United States was the global pioneer of explicitly racist law–and not just, by any means, in the Jim Crow South. Strikingly, American law was most helpful to the most radical Nazi jurists. In the early years of the Third Reich, 1933 to 1936, conservative nationalist lawyers in Germany debated with Nazi radicals about how to create a body of anti-Semitic law, but one consonant with German legal traditions, which emphasized strict adherence to carefully-articulated concepts. The radicals found their model in U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation law, and in a legal culture that, from their point of view, was refreshingly open to innovation. Yet even the most radical Nazi jurists found the notorious one-drop rule, and the extreme punishments some U.S. states meted out for entering into racially-mixed marriages, too harsh and inhumane. Professor Whitman’s unsettling, learned, and deeply-engaging book deserves a large audience. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Lindsay Young Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches courses in modern European and German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017) by wondering whether Jim Crow laws in the U.S. had any impact...
We all know the famous opening phrase of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this Continent a new Nation.” The truth is different. In 1776, thirteen American colonies declared themselves independent states that only temporarily joined forces in order to defeat the British. Once victorious, they planned to go their separate ways. The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor a political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence and accept the creation of a federal government with power over their autonomy as states. The Quartet is the story of this second American founding and of the men most responsible—George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. These men, with the help of Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation, manipulating the political process to force the calling of the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions, and, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional settlement. Joseph Ellis is the author of many works of American history including Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; and American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, which won the National Book Award. He recently retired from his position as the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife and their youngest son.
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrained affair, dominated by aristocratic values, and while we recognize their horrors for the participants, we often compare battles to the duels those aristocrats fought over private matters of honor. Not true, claims Whitman, who argues instead that battles during the period 1709 (Battle of Malplaquet) and 1863/1870 (Gettysburg/Sedan) were understood by contemporaries not to be royal duels but “legal procedure[s], a lawful means of deciding international disputes through consensual collective violence.” [3] Understanding war as a form of trial is what gave warfare of the era its decisiveness (sorry Russ) and forces us, according to Whitman, to change the way we interpret, for example, Frederick the Great’s invasion of Silesia. Whitman, who is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and an academically trained historian (PhD Chicago 1987), brings the perspective of both lawyer and historian to his work ways that teach us much about both the military history and the law of the period he considers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrained affair, dominated by aristocratic values, and while we recognize their horrors for the participants, we often compare battles to the duels those aristocrats fought over private matters of honor. Not true, claims Whitman, who argues instead that battles during the period 1709 (Battle of Malplaquet) and 1863/1870 (Gettysburg/Sedan) were understood by contemporaries not to be royal duels but “legal procedure[s], a lawful means of deciding international disputes through consensual collective violence.” [3] Understanding war as a form of trial is what gave warfare of the era its decisiveness (sorry Russ) and forces us, according to Whitman, to change the way we interpret, for example, Frederick the Great’s invasion of Silesia. Whitman, who is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and an academically trained historian (PhD Chicago 1987), brings the perspective of both lawyer and historian to his work ways that teach us much about both the military history and the law of the period he considers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrained affair, dominated by aristocratic values, and while we recognize their horrors for the participants, we often compare battles to the duels those aristocrats fought over private matters of honor. Not true, claims Whitman, who argues instead that battles during the period 1709 (Battle of Malplaquet) and 1863/1870 (Gettysburg/Sedan) were understood by contemporaries not to be royal duels but “legal procedure[s], a lawful means of deciding international disputes through consensual collective violence.” [3] Understanding war as a form of trial is what gave warfare of the era its decisiveness (sorry Russ) and forces us, according to Whitman, to change the way we interpret, for example, Frederick the Great’s invasion of Silesia. Whitman, who is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and an academically trained historian (PhD Chicago 1987), brings the perspective of both lawyer and historian to his work ways that teach us much about both the military history and the law of the period he considers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrained affair, dominated by aristocratic values, and while we recognize their horrors for the participants, we often compare battles to the duels those aristocrats fought over private matters of honor. Not true, claims Whitman, who argues instead that battles during the period 1709 (Battle of Malplaquet) and 1863/1870 (Gettysburg/Sedan) were understood by contemporaries not to be royal duels but “legal procedure[s], a lawful means of deciding international disputes through consensual collective violence.” [3] Understanding war as a form of trial is what gave warfare of the era its decisiveness (sorry Russ) and forces us, according to Whitman, to change the way we interpret, for example, Frederick the Great’s invasion of Silesia. Whitman, who is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and an academically trained historian (PhD Chicago 1987), brings the perspective of both lawyer and historian to his work ways that teach us much about both the military history and the law of the period he considers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrained affair, dominated by aristocratic values, and while we recognize their horrors for the participants, we often compare battles to the duels those aristocrats fought over private matters of honor. Not true, claims Whitman, who argues instead that battles during the period 1709 (Battle of Malplaquet) and 1863/1870 (Gettysburg/Sedan) were understood by contemporaries not to be royal duels but “legal procedure[s], a lawful means of deciding international disputes through consensual collective violence.” [3] Understanding war as a form of trial is what gave warfare of the era its decisiveness (sorry Russ) and forces us, according to Whitman, to change the way we interpret, for example, Frederick the Great’s invasion of Silesia. Whitman, who is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and an academically trained historian (PhD Chicago 1987), brings the perspective of both lawyer and historian to his work ways that teach us much about both the military history and the law of the period he considers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. In its classic form, a “decisive” pitched battle was a beautifully contained event, lasting a single day, killing only combatants, and resolving legal questions of immense significance. Yet since the mid-nineteenth century, pitched battles no longer decide wars, which now routinely degenerate into general devastation. Why did pitched battle ever work as a conflict resolution device? Why has it ceased working since 1860? James Q. Whitman is Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. This Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History was recorded May 7, 2009.
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. In its classic form, a “decisive” pitched battle was a beautifully contained event, lasting a single day, killing only combatants, and resolving legal questions of immense significance. Yet since the mid-nineteenth century, pitched battles no longer decide wars, which now routinely degenerate into general devastation. Why did pitched battle ever work as a conflict resolution device? Why has it ceased working since 1860? James Q. Whitman is Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. This Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History was recorded May 7, 2009.